Remotely controlled battery powered toy vehicles are generally well known. Also well known are many means of remote control for such motorized toys, both radio wave and infrared based.
Reversible or flippable toy cars are also known in the art. Such toy cars generally have open wheels (mounted laterally outside the chassis and uncovered by fenders) that are large enough to extend beyond the top of the car body, so as to support the car clear off the ground when flipped upside-down. The chassis may either have two distinct “car body appearances” on the two opposite sides, or it can be identical on both sides.
Also known are reversible or flippable toy cars that are capable of flipping themselves. For this purpose, some prior art toys use spring actuated levers that are released and hit the ground under the car (causing one end of the car to back-flip over the other end), while other prior art toys invert themselves by slowly climbing up with their front wheels on any vertical wall (under the propulsion of their rear wheels driven by high-torque motors) until their front end flips over backwards.
Also known in the art are toy ramps and tracks used in conjunction with toy cars. Ramps are typically used for jumps and rollovers, while tracks are used for creating loops and circuits.
Collimated optical or infrared (IR) beam remote control schemes for toys are also known in the art, generally involving a handheld remote control unit which emits a collimated optical and/or IR beam which projects a spot on the floor. The spot generated by this control indicates the area that the motorized toy must move towards. The vehicle detects, moves towards and reaches the spot projected on the ground from the remote control; if the user simply moves the spot of light to a succession of new positions to define the desired trajectory, the toy will follow such trajectory. U.S. Pat. No. 7,147,535 teaches an analog version of such control scheme, while U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/369,330 (which shares the first named inventor with the present application) teaches a more sophisticated control scheme with digitally coded ID signals, discrete control channels, and the ability for the controlled toys themselves to control or interact with other motorized toys.
Such remote controlled motorized toys known in the art have certain limitations. In particular, the power to weight ratio for the available remote controlled toy vehicles is generally low by design, mainly due to the added weight of the onboard electrical batteries (typically the rechargeable type) and motors. Furthermore, particularly in small indoor environments typical of rooms in a house, users become quickly bored with the limited possibilities for play with such toy vehicles, which is often restricted to driving in endless loops, performing slaloms around objects and/or crashing and bumping into walls and furniture.
The prior art ramps and tracks also have limitations. In order to support and guide the toy cars and to be able to propel them in the air, such ramps and tracks must withstand significant impact forces and high levels of horizontal axis G-forces imparted by the cars travelling at high speed. Consequently, such ramps and tracks are built very sturdy and heavy, often with metal and other expensive components. Furthermore, in order to be self-standing and self-supported, such ramps and tracks require sizeable bases and large footprints, which adds bulk and causes difficulties in packaging such toys in retail boxes of reasonable sizes.
Prior art collimated infrared (IR) beam remote control schemes (that rely on a controlled vehicle tracking the IR light reflected from a target spot), while more intuitive and easier for younger users, are limited to relatively low speeds and only work when the target spot is kept within proximity of the moving vehicle. Even with the implementation of the best beam tracking methods known in the art, these remote controlled vehicles have major difficulties tracking a target IR spot that moves too fast; the frustrating result is that such vehicles will generally come to an abrupt stop whenever they cannot keep up with a fast moving IR target spot that gets so far ahead so as to exceed the detection range of the car's on-board IR sensors. This requirement to slow down the movement of the IR target spot (in order to maintain control) detracts from the play value of such toys, preventing them from performing more entertaining acts that require high speed.
Another shortcoming of prior art collimated infrared (IR) beam remote control schemes for motorized toys is the lack of a variable speed control mechanism implemented on the remote controller itself. The speed with which the car follows and approaches the moving IR target spot is, in the most current art, decided by the on-board micro control unit (MCU) based on the signals received from the on-board IR sensors. In the case of a fast moving IR target spot, the MCU will often command approach speeds that are inadequate: either too slow (resulting in the same lost signal problem discussed in the previous paragraph) or too fast (resulting in speeding through the target spot and overshooting it).